When you rent your home – as I do – there are limits to what you can do with it, aesthetically speaking. Well, that’s not strictly true. Renters such as Luke Edward Hall and Duncan Campbell have redecorated their Cotswolds house from top to bottom, but we never intended to stay in our Barbican flat long term and my boyfriend loathes painting, so I try not to fiddle with it too much. The problem is, we’ve inherited a grubby old carpet and clinical white walls, so our flat has never really felt like ‘me’.
The instinctive urge to represent my personal style and my whole identity through my home has always been there, despite never owning a property. Perhaps it’s because I don’t own my home, so I need to create a personal connection and feeling of belonging. I’ve always been this way. I remember going on family holidays in my teens and on the first day, while everything was still brand new to me, I’d secretly feel panicked or even tearful at the unfamiliar room around me. Nothing was mine and I didn’t know where anything was – it was deeply uncomfortable, even as a child.
I share occasional photos of my flat on Instagram (with angles carefully chosen to hide the bits I don’t want you to see) and I can sense the judgement through the screen. Every time I hit share, I want to add a caveat, pointing out all the things I would never have picked if I had the choice. I know that the harshest critic is always myself.
Unlike the many reno accounts out there, I can’t replace our knackered kitchen and use it as my big ‘ta-daa – look what I created!’ moment but I can change the small things, the moveable items that I can take with me when we go. A flatweave rug here, a painting hung with Command strips there. However, my real vice is styling objects on flat surfaces. I wish I was joking but few things give me greater satisfaction than a session rearranging my shelves. Better that than hard drugs or gambling, I suppose.
Instagram has always been a visual CV of sorts but when you have two rooms in your entire flat and one of them only has a bed in it, the content options are somewhat limited. That’s the reason why I mostly share photos of my coffee table (a large vintage lucite and glass number) and my bookshelves (a three-metre wall of Vitsoe that also houses the TV). Of course, I don’t style my shelves or my coffee table for Instagram likes. My penchant for rearranging is purely for myself. My surroundings have a significant impact on my mood and I spend a lot of time here since I work from home, so I need some element of change. Change breathes new energy into the room and stops it from feeling stagnant. I’m also incredibly indecisive and I have a very short attention span – I could love something one week and by the next, I’m sick of seeing it. These are triggers for that side-eye I give my bookshelves when I really should be working. It’s the niggling feeling that if I stacked those books and moved those three candlesticks, it might be an improvement.
That’s how it always starts out, then inevitably three hours later, I haven’t eaten anything or finished what I was meant to be writing but I have taken everything off the shelves, rehung them at a slightly different height (such is the joy of easily adjustable Vitsoe) and I’ve moved every book on every shelf, in search of the feeling of personal achievement.
When nothing else is going to plan, at least I can shuffle a few things around and make the room feel a little bit more like my own. It’s a small and perhaps shallow victory in a world where my time could be spent on something more meaningful, but for me, rejigging a room or a tabletop to look better or just different is a task that I find cathartic and comforting. It’s something I can change, something I can control. Heck, it’s something I can succeed at. I’ll save the psychotherapy for another day but who knew that swapping trinket bowls and vases on a coffee table would turn out to be so intrinsically linked to self-esteem and a flailing sense of self? If some people have a bad day, they chain-smoke 25 cigarettes. If I have a bad day, the design books better watch themselves…
When I’m at home, I want to see things that make me feel happy and inspired. That might be a beautiful book cover, a framed painting, or a one-off sculpture. When I glance around the room and my gaze falls on these objects, it gives me a little boost. But there’s a whole nostalgia element too. I want to be surrounded by reminders of the people I love and the places I’ve been (many of the decorative items on my shelves were mementoes from trips away). Collecting and displaying items is deeply personal and emotive. Yes, those objects speak to me on an aesthetic level but they mean more than that. For example, I have a ceramic conker that a dear friend gave me as a surprise gift, I have a wooden face in profile that was carved by my dad when he was young and candlesticks I bought on my last trip to New York. Not everything means something – several of the items are just pieces that I liked the colour or shape of – but in a home that I don’t own and can’t decorate to feel like mine, it’s important to feel cushioned by good memories, especially in times when you might be unsettled.
On a practical level, you can’t have all of the things on show all of the time. You could, but it’s a one-way ticket to clutter. I know from experience that small objects in any great quantity start to look like a jumble sale very quickly, so you need to be strategic about your placement. I would love to have a thoughtful and minimal home like Nigel Slater, John Pawson or Rose Uniacke, with the odd impactful sculpture or single bud vase dotted around, but I am not that person. I’m drawn to lots of different things, in various colours, materials and styles. Some would call it eclectic, some might call it a mess. That’s why I rotate things in and out of storage, move stuff around and generally make sure that I get to see the pieces I love, just not all at once.
With my coffee table for example (which I usually stack with four piles of books, plus a vase and a few other bits), I might choose pieces from a specific era, or I’ll identify two or three key colours, so there’s cohesive thread. It won’t be in-your-face obvious, but having a very subtle theme makes a collection of random things feel like they belong together. Trays are also excellent at this. If your knick-knacks look like they’re floating – whack ‘em on a tray and they’ll feel intentional. Plus, it’s a handy way of adding colour or texture via the tray itself. I’ve recently done blue and brown accents, forest green and terracotta and on another occasion, all of the books on my coffee table were design books about New York. I’m sure no one else noticed, but it made me smile. What a thrilling life I lead…
Two other things to consider – especially with shelves but the same applies to any surface – are negative space (give your books and objects breathing room or they’ll look crammed in) and height variation. Nothing looks flatter than a display that is literally flat. You want to create an undulating line with some tall objects and some short ones. When I add a new item to the mix, or even when I buy a new bunch of flowers, I might have a little rearrange at the same time to make sure the heights are still looking good together. Sometimes I also pick particular objects because their colour or material indicates a change in season. I don’t have rules as I gauge things by eye and how they make me feel, but my own no-nos are bookshelves arranged by colour and bland, show-home prop styling. You know the look; lots of wicker baskets, potted plants on top of creamy-toned books that were purchased solely for their neutral covers, groups of ceramic pots that are only there to fill an empty space. Collect slowly and instinctively. Personally, I want the objects around me to mean something, because that’s what makes a place feel like home.
